


red letters

by grandstander



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: If | Fire Emblem: Fates
Genre: (sort of modern; its vaguely 1970s ish), Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-25
Updated: 2016-08-25
Packaged: 2018-08-11 00:59:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7869085
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grandstander/pseuds/grandstander
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Xander fell in love when he was sixteen. He met a boy the same age as him, a dashing smile and wild brown hair; he's been in love ever since.</p>
            </blockquote>





	red letters

**Author's Note:**

> the vaguest ryomarx au imaginable 
> 
> its not planned out, its vaguely the 1970s-80s i guess? mostly cause i like the aesthetic of photographs from the 70s. anyway, its just love letter stuff, i wanted to write something very romantic and ive been trying to find some ryomarx to write for a while (although, this isnt what i wanted entirely, so i may do something closer to canon later on)
> 
> hope you all like it, and sorry its only a drabble! if you want, listen to some beirut music while reading! its what i listened to while writing.

There is a box that Xander keeps in the bottom draw of his desk. The draw has a small, silver hole shaped for a key that he wears under the fitted dress shirts he wears. It hangs close to his skin, close to his heart, in the same way that box holds pieces of a love affair from when he was sixteen. 

Postcards, letters, chipped seashells and ribbons stowed away neatly years ago, and now a mess from fingers flitting through them. Rosegold colors splashed over memories pinned in photographs with thick white boards of a young, shy boy and a brightly smiling brown haired boy on his shoulder. Xander knows the photo well (knows the memory well, too). When he looks at it, the frames of a memory in his heart and mind begin to roll and he pines, he wishes, he craves, he dreams and sighs and he feels whimsy settle in his bones after ten years from when it was born. He can recall the sound of the waves and he can still hear the laugh from the other boy-- Ryoma was his name, a name he hadn’t ever heard before, but it’s one he’s curled his tongue around so many times he knows it backwards and forwards now. 

Red paint dabs the edges of the postcards, pictures of roses and the stoney white walls of an Italian city that probably aren’t what they were anymore. Xander met a boy there who stole him away, stole his heart, and Xander had let it settle in that man's pocket. He misses him, of course, but when he looks at the photos, at the love letters, he only feels the warmth of a summer love slip around him in the same way wine pours slowly into a glass. The letters are weeks apart, sometimes months, but still Xander will pull them out and roam over the words time and time again. The feel like a warm breeze, like a song he knows the beat to too well, and there’s a smile over his face as he passes over the photos again and again. 

Xander's fingers trace the edges of letters and postcards with faded pictures of Italy, and he remembers his first kiss, he remembers it in a garden with droves of flowers and smells drowning him. It’s a fond memory, a soft one with shyness at the very edges of Ryoma’s movements that pulled a rise from Xander’s heart. He could have plausibly worried that his heart had leapt into the other boy’s chest to join Ryoma’s (honestly, Xander wouldn’t have had any qualms with it being there). It pulls a fond smile to his lips as he recalls, and his eyes close as he tries to recall the feeling of it once again. It’s faded, but he can remember, he remembers the touch of fingers on his palms, the warmth of the other boy’s mouth, and he feels himself glow in a way that only love can make him bloom. 

The urge to read through over every word, to press it into his memories and carve into the valves of his heart is always there when he opens the box. He wants to engrave the smell of the paper, and he wonders if it’s the same cologne Ryoma wore when they were sixteen. Xander must be reasonable, though, he reminds himself; his own letters would never be written in a timely manner if he dove himself into memories every time. 

Gently, Xander pulls the newest of the letters from the box, still tucked in a pristine white envelope with a broken red seal at its flap. It’s only a few days old, actually, and it brings from Xander a new feeling of happiness and love; it’s aged in him these past ten years, but like a garden it has been cultivated tenderly. A dance between two lovers of sweet-nothings and poeticism to plant the seeds, a kiss for good measure, and grown with the changes of the season with careful, devoted hands. Flowers twine together as pens fall to paper and like birds they migrate to one another, meeting halfway with pressed flowers, photographs, and promises to always have one another. He reads over it once more, to remind himself and partially for the sake of his sentimental heart. 

With a fond sigh, he sets it next to the blank sheet in front of him, and he presses his pen to the paper.


End file.
